Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday October 01, 2011 @08:42PM
from the boy-that-was-fast dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news that the Open Document Format 1.2 specification has finally been approved.
"The most important improvement to ODF 1.2 is the newly built spreadsheet support. The old format was buggy and had a lot of legacy problems. Therefore the new spreadsheet module was written from scratch. 'A complete clean room implementation of the spreadsheet formula was built,' said [Michiel Leenaars, director of the Internet Society Netherlands]. ... Another important improvement in ODF 1.2 is the support for Resource Description Framework (RDF) metadata, a W3C standard model for data interchange on the Web. ... Instead of only being able to link to a URL, RDF allows users to link text in documents to other things like a V-Card or a calendar item. Companies can use this technology to structure their workflow."

not really, the common denominator here is excel, I seriously cant expect to send a odf file and have some random person open it in excel (or word for documents etc) I use open office, I spread it around my workplace like candy, but at end end of it all the files get defaulted to save in MS format cause that is what everyone else uses, and I cant really soapbox to a customer who is using something that works fine in their minds

Is it really? Excel's problem with their existing ODF support was that it strictly adhered to the specification, rather than supporting the extensions that were used by OpenOffice. The common denominator is actually the useless specs of the previous standard that did not completely include everything that was required (mainly the fomulas).

It is similar to the useless standard of OOXML which is not representative of what MS-Office actually uses. If OpenOffice provided a complete implementation of the strict version of OOXML, they would not be compatible with Microsoft's product. Would you consider the common denominator to be Office or OpenOffice there?

This is a good solution but until there are significant inroads made into getting corporate IT specifiers to adopt ODF compliant software, users won't be able to use it on most corporate machines. The solution must be to actively market the standard to the corporates who currently can't see past proprietary formats and counter MS's dominance. This is easier said than done as MS aggressively pushes their product and spreads disinformation. Corporate buyers also tend to distrust anything which is free to inst

The guys behind ODF are actively trying to fix their flaws (hence this story)The guys behind OpenOffice aim for compatibility instead of blindly implementing a spec that is flawed and noone else follows

MS could easily have implemented the same extensions to ODF, and they had already done so in the earlier ODF plugin they sponsored, which was BSD licensed so they could have simply reused the code. Instead, they chose to go out of their way to write a new implementation which they knew would be incompatible with everyone else.They only implemented ODF at all to try and pull the wool over people's eyes, it was the bare minimum to try and fool those who were demanding open standards, while still trying to maintain their lock-in.

The guys behind ODF are actively trying to fix their flaws (hence this story)

And Office 2010 has better support for their standardised file format than 2007. Everybody tries to improve.

The guys behind OpenOffice aim for compatibility instead of blindly implementing a spec that is flawed and noone else follows

And if they are not aiming for the standard, who are the guys behind OpenOffice attempting to be compatible with? They are the trendsetters with the ODF format. Other office packages are expected to be compatible with it.

OO are the trendsetters yes, but they chose a formula language which is based on that used by excel, as other vendors were already somewhat familiar with it...They also fully documented their extensions, so third parties could pick up on them, and they worked with OASIS to ensure that future versions of ODF address this issue.

MS on the other hand are not trying to work with the community, they chose to create their own format and force it through ISO rather than working with the existing format, when they g

Well, actually, ODF has simply been brought to the point that it should have been when it was first released. Yes, RDF support is a nice improvement, but ODF 1.0 was severly lacking in many areas. This is what ODF should have been.

While true, a partial open format is better than nothing (which was the status quo before) and a good first step... And the development process is open, people are free to join and contribute/suggest improvements.

OOXML is also severely lacking, but does not have an open development process and is not being improved.

OOXML and ODF have differnt purposes. OOXML codifies the existing microsoft office formats in an XML container. This is largely for legacy purposes as there's basically a 1:1 mapping of existing documents to OOXML.

ODF is an attempt to create an ideal document format.

To put it simply, converting.doc to.docx requires reformatting. Converting.doc to ODF requires translation, and no translation is ever 1:1

Exactly. The ODF specification was a complete mess last time I read it (1.0) and was rushed through ISO. OOXML then got rushed through ISO with the justification that ODF had been allowed in its crappy incomplete state (with 0 fully compliant implementations), so why shouldn't OOXML (also with 0 fully compliant implementations)? It would have been a lot easier to block OOXML if ODF hadn't been rushed through by the 'anything but Microsoft' crowd (IBM, Novell, Sun, etc).

Nice try. You clearly didn't serve on any of the standards committees. ODF1 wasn't a complete mess, perhaps you could enlighten us to where it was a mess? Unlike the OOXML I read, and I did read a lot of it, ODF was not broken.

Damn straight. If I had, neither spec would have had my vote for counting as a standard. ODF 1.0 was fine as a first draft. As a standard, it was an embarrassment and most of the problems were met with 'we'll fix this in a later version'.

wasn't a complete mess, perhaps you could enlighten us to where it was a mess?

It's been a couple of years, but as I recall the table format was horrible, the spreadsheet description was basically missing. The spec itself was far too short to do what it claimed. I looked at implementing some bits, but basically the only thing to do when you got t

It's been a couple of years, but as I recall the table format was horrible,

It was fine. It allowed nested tables but also conventional row/cell spans.
Infact it was a good example how they weren't following OO.o's format because it didn't truly understand spans at the time (instead, it mimicked them with nesting). Despite OO.o's flaws they put spans into the spec because it made sense.

the spreadsheet description was basically missing. The spec itself was far too short to do what it claimed.

Yes the ODF1 spreadsheet specification was complete crap. Huge portions, like the entire formula language definition, and all the function definitions were completely left out, and what was there was vague and inconsistent. As a result, while word processor documents largely transfer well between OpenOffice, KWord, MS Word, and others, but spreadsheets don't transfer at all. You loose not only formating and plots but even calculations. ODF1 is a completely worthless standard for spreadsheets.

It would have been great to see them do some work towards importing excel macros into openoffice. Obviously there are ample good reasons not to do it; but plenty of reasons in favor of it as well. And really, anything that encourages MSOffice -> openoffice migration should get some attention, IMHO.

It's a specification! 'Them', for clarity, are standards developers - not necessarily OpenOffice.org coders. OpenOffice.org is not the Open Document Format if that helps to make it any clearer.

That said, OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice both import Excel macro's quite well and have for a very long time. Unless you have failing examples I'm pretty sure you're just sucking that assumption out of thin air.

It might be worth noting that the part of ODF1.2 that deals with spreadsheet formulae started first by docume

It would have been great to see them do some work towards importing excel macros into openoffice. Obviously there are ample good reasons not to do it; but plenty of reasons in favor of it as well. And really, anything that encourages MSOffice -> openoffice migration should get some attention, IMHO.

This is about ODF, not about OpenOffice. Aside from that, I think it would be wasted time. Importing macros means that you need to translate VBscript into something else. If you translate macros, there is always something that's not going to work. Those excel-scripts that some companies use can be very complex. You can never trust it completely without testing it extensively, and probably having to change a few things. Just that is enough for most IT-managers to decide not to use it. If OO would completely

You really should move over to Libreoffice, despite the stupid name that's where all the developers are, and it works a lot better than OpenOffice does in my experience. But then again, based upon your post, I have a feeling that it might be up to IT to switch over.

It was commercialized originally as staroffice, it sucked a lot more then than it does now...

Really it's not practical for a commercial vendor to compete in this space, they face a huge uphill battle against ms and would need to bleed money for years before they started making any profit, and then ms would buy them out and shut them down... Open source is really the only practical way to compete, as you can slowly improve over time without having the pressure of profit requirements.

That's the whole point of having these standards. Excel is a great app, but if MS decides to make a non-backward compatible change, it's on individual users to maintain their documents and software so as not to be in the situation you describe. On the other hand, when a standard gets an update, the old versions of said standard haven't gone anywhere, which means that if there were versions of open software available that were in compliance with that version of the standard, you can still get it. And if f

As long as it's a one way trip you shouldn't have much trouble. The main reason that office files are such a mess is that they maintain backwards compatibility more or less to version 1.0. But the problem tends to be that not everybody uses the same version of Office which can and does lead to problems.

I've personally seen it myself where formatting and all that goes to hell because I'm not using the correct version of Word. And good luck if you don't want to upgrade your copy to match everybody else' copy.

If they vary significantly enough to cause problems then they either aren't standards compliant or the standard needs to be fixed. Suggesting that it's somehow inevitable demands some evidence that it's the case. MS can't ignore the standards without risking another costly antitrust probe, and everybody else needs it in order to have a viable product.

The standard did not define how to store spreadsheet formulae, so OpenOffice being the first implementation was forced to create their own extension to store this data. Most other implementations of ODF, including the microsoft-sponsored ODF plugin copied the OpenOffice extension in order to maintain interoperability...

MS however ignored this, and now created their own incompatible extension... Technically in compliance with the standard, but in practice they went out of their way to exploit flaws in the standard to break interoperability.

That is correct, the standard was incomplete and not fully functional in the 1.0 revision, and the 1.2 revision is aiming to address those problems.

That said, many standards are like this and have areas within them which are open to interpretation, generally those implementing the standards care about interoperability and will work together to work around the flaws in the short term, and fix them in the long term. Unfortunately this requires good will and doesn't work when you have parties such as MS who ar

Just because some archivists were worried (rightly) about archiving MSOFFICE formats doesn't mean that ODF is the right solution. The impression I get is that ODF is mostly a red herring and was brought in by groups with a vested interest in unseating MS who want to use it as a lever to replace MSOFFICE with OOo.

IMO the real issue is that WYSIYG office formats blur the line between input and output and in the case of spreasheets blur the line between data input and processing rules input. The files store th

They were semi right. They could have in the same way that everybody else doesn't seem to be having that trouble, they just chose not to to use a compatible namespace. The folks over at MS could easily have picked up the phone or sent an email to the other projects and informally agree upon some sort of namespace that would be compatible. Or, they could always just issue an RFC and do something about it ad hoc until the next revision came out.

if you by office mean microsoft office - so is the support for 1.0 so that is already ancient and useless since Microsoft deliberatly made sure their implementation differ from all other implementations of ODF 1.0

The part that was made incompatible was the spreadsheet part where everyone else just used microsofts office format - and microsoft used something else....

Microsofts implementation shows that they are intentionally trying to undermine the standardardisation on ODF by making incompatible versions.Mi

Organizations that work with Microsoft Office have to wait to take advantage of improvements to the specification. While other vendors have implemented ODF 1.2, Microsoft has been at version 1.1 since Office 2007 SP2. "Microsoft addicts will have to wait," said Leenaars, adding that Microsoft is actively working on support for ODF 1.2. The software giant will host the eighth ODF plugfest in Brussels where they are expected to announce ODF 1.2 support. The event is scheduled to take place April 26 and 27.

I have two wishes. Polynomial regression on ods Write code to convert mathematical formulas from word to odt and back again.When these two wishes have been fulfilled. Libreoffice will be ready for use in high schools.

"The old format was buggy and had a lot of legacy problems. Therefore the new spreadsheet module was written from scratch."

O rly? And whose fault was it that the old format was buggy? Was it perchance the the same organisation which is releasing the new format? So why exactly should we believe that the new one is "better"?

I'm tired of format churn. 90% of it doesn't need to happen. Just get it right and stick with it, and if you try to tell me that you can't tell whether or not you've ever "got it right" because there's, like, no right or wrong, dude, and I should just lighten up and sorta go with the flow of the vibe of the zeitgeist of the moment and buy this month's iPad -- well, then you've just invalidated your claim to have got it right this time.

Surely data formats aren't rocket surgery. Just build it so it's a bit extensible, doesn't hardcode any silly assumptions, doesn't embed a Turing-complete binary format which can root your OS, and you'll be pretty much there.

No, see, that's my entire point. We're not using newer scientific ideas just because they're new; we're using them because they're objectively, testably better. We're also still using a lot of very old scientific ideas (like, say, Pythagoras' theorem of the hypotenuse) because despite being old, they're still correct, and don't magically become incorrect just because of the passing of time.

If someone can point to objective metrics that show why a new data format is better than an old one - and also explain

O rly? And whose fault was it that the old format was buggy? Was it perchance the the same organisation which is releasing the new format? So why exactly should we believe that the new one is "better"?

Perhaps because people can learn from their mistakes, and put new insights to good use?

In many cases, yes. However this time the AC led off with a first post that could well have come from general ignorance. Many people still fear openoffice, and show that level of complete lack of understanding. There are many people around here who still think that openoffice is a java-dependent product of Sun Microsystems that is determined to takeover your entire desktop and consume absurd amounts of resources in order to do the simplest of imaginable tasks.

There are many people around here who still think that openoffice is a java-dependent product of Sun Microsystems that is determined to takeover your entire desktop and consume absurd amounts of resources in order to do the simplest of imaginable tasks.

Does it really matter just what pulls it in, as long as the end user tries to install Calc and java gets pulled in? That is, from the end user's perspective, a dependency on java. No ifs and buts about it.

Playing the "blame the distro" game isn't helpful either. If the app devs make it too difficult for the world's biggest OSS contributor to p

Playing the "blame the distro" game isn't helpful either. If the app devs make it too difficult for the world's biggest OSS contributor to provide OO.o without java, the blame should not be placed with the distro. Nor the end user.

It's a tradeoff between installing Java or crippling OOo's more enterprise-friendly features until the end-administrator installs it manually. As an enterprise-oriented distro, it makes sense for Red Hat to include Java as a dependency.

My main question here would be why the hell are you still using OpenOffice.org anyway? I've been on LibreOffice for ages now, and (in Debian at least, as far as I can tell) LibreOffice Calc does not require any sort of Java runtime.

This would make sense given that one of the aims of LibreOffice is to "reduce Java dependency [documentfoundation.org]".

1) Because the name "LibreOffice" sucks. It really, really, really sucks.2) I have a vested interest in keeping my users happy, and right now, that doesn't mean throwing away 10+ years worth of the name "OpenOffice".3) Because on my systems, OpenOffice loads much faster (for equivalent version)4) A greater rather than lesser Java dependency doesn't bother me all that much.5) It is what I am used to setting up and customizing (at the system level).

Disabling everything but Excel x86_64 from a Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 DVD states 1.39 GB. I suspect that some of that is because of non-selectables always installed with the Professional Plus version, but that it's still horribly bloated.

OO may be bloated in its own right, but not when you compare it to the competition..

But what is the competition for OO.o calc? The several-hundred-dollar and closed Excel?

Or free and open spreadsheets like gnumeric, which weighs in at around 14 MB, and IME[*] has better compatibility with Excel than OO.o has?

[*] At least up to but not including the changes mentioned in the submission. I have both installed, and frequently have to open Excel-created sheets that my boss or other colleagues send me, and sometimes make corrections and send them back. gnumeric is less problematic, especially when people have been "fancy" and used smaller fonts or different colors. YMMV, but for me and the work I do every day, gnumeric is the competition, and has so far won.

Bloat is bloat, whether it comes from Microsoft or Sun/Oracle/OSS-coders. Whether it has less bloat than the competition doesn't reduce the bloat."Our soup only has half as much urine in it as the competition" is not a winning argument.

Excel is the primary competitor yes, Gnumeric is great and is designed for accuracy while openoffice is designed for excel compatibility, the trouble with that is people will assume excel is correct and gnumeric is wrong because its lesser known.

OO is certainly bloated, but its not looking to win converts from gnumeric, its looking to win converts from excel which is even more bloated... Baby steps... If enough people migrate to OO, then it will become necessary to use open file formats, at which point it w

Anybody that cares about the documents functioning properly in the future or when exchanged with random other people doesn't use the MS Office formats. MS does go to lengths to maintain backwards compatibility, but ultimately it's still risky to use different versions to work on a file.

> If you send it as an RTF they shouldn't have any trouble opening it.

This is not Office, this is a document scanning system - and it may very well have issues with RTF. That being said, I found RTF to be generally less well supported on pretty much all office suites - it usually supports less features and causes more problems. DOC was actually pretty well supported outside of Microsoft, too, but with DOCX we are pretty much back to square 1 (although it should be easier to read in theory).

1. The parent post is from hairyfeet, a paid Microsoft astroturfer. Last time he submitted his resume to anyone was when he was hired to whore for karma and post Microsoft propaganda here.

2. HR departments accept PDF just fine, and there is no such thing as "resume scanning software". Recruiters insist on Word, so they can remove your contact information and send a copy to every company they know. This is the only thing I have ever seen recruiters doing.

The parent post is from Alex Belits, a jobless Linux astroturfer. Last time he submitted his resume to anyone was when he tried to be Linus Torvalds bootlicker and was turned down for drool.

See how nicely that fits there loony tunes? Oh and I'm not working for anyone but myself, I am your worst nightmare...I'm a retailer. you see we have tried your product and found your bullshit and lies to be just that so maybe you'd like me to enlighten some of the masses, hmm?,

Meanwhile i'll go back to enjoying my nice new Asus EEE Windows 7 HP netbook, which I got myself as a little prezzie with some of the profits I made from NOT carrying an inferior product. If you don't like being last? Try putting out a product worth actually stocking. You know what you remind me of? A religious nutball. When someone points out a hole in your dogma you go "La la la, it can't be true! U must be a M$ Ninja!" while we all laugh at your batshit insanity. But hey friend here is a nice video of your hero RMS showing why he is the great one [youtube.com] so that should cheer you up.

For the dell mini the problem was the graphics card which had no history with linux and was released with closed drivers. Currently there are two open drivers available. A stub driver that provides a basic frame buffer, and a driver that supports some 2D acceleration.The same graphics tech is coming back around with cedar trail and intel has committed to developing a open driver for both it and the GMA 500. ( I also believe it was the Xorg side driver that broke and not the kernel side) Absolutely nothing a

Yea, I noticed headhunters wanted.doc format. I once complied and the headhunter modified my resume before he send it on to my next employer. I didn't know he would change it, so I got a bit in a bind during the interview as there were lies on it. Strangely my resume was impressive enough and I got hired.

The second time another headhunter wanted a.doc file as well, and I asked him about it and he told me straight out he wanted to embellish it a bit. I told him no, and gave him the.pdf. That interview wen